Decision Fusion in Space-Time Spreading aided Distributed MIMO WSNs

In this letter, we propose space-time spreading (STS) of local sensor decisions before reporting them over a wireless multiple access channel (MAC), in order to achieve flexible balance between diversity and multiplexing gain as well as eliminate any chance of intrinsic interference inherent in MAC scenarios. Spreading of the sensor decisions using dispersion vectors exploits the benefits of multi-slot decision to improve low-complexity diversity gain and opportunistic throughput. On the other hand, at the receive side of the reporting channel, we formulate and compare optimum and sub-optimum fusion rules for arriving at a reliable conclusion.Simulation results demonstrate gain in performance with STS aided transmission from a minimum of 3 times to a maximum of 6 times over performance without STS.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Throughput analysis for virtual MIMO WSNs over measured MIMO channels

A recently conducted indoor-to-outdoor measurement campaign for investigating the propagation characteristics of an 8×8 virtual multiple-input-multiple-output-based wireless sensor network is presented in this paper. The campaign is conducted in an instrumentation room devoid of windows, but filled with different noisy electrical and measuring units. The channel impulse responses are reported when a 20-MHz wide signal is transmitted at 2.53 GHz. Measurements are collected for 15 different spatial combinations of the transmit antennas. After analyzing the collected data, system capacity and achievable transmission rates are calculated for each measurement scenario. Using these values, we examined the best configuration for positioning the sensors that can maximize overall network throughput. Results demonstrated that distributing sensors on all four walls of the room can achieve the highest possible information rate